Maltese people are taking the longest time, when compared to other EU countries, to leave their parent’s home, the latest Eurostat figures for 2017 show.

On average, a Maltese person leavers their parent’s home when they are 32.2 years old, which means that on average, Maltese people are 6 years older than other Europeans when going out on their own. EU citizens are 26 years-old (on average) when they move out of their parent’s home.

In 2017 in the EU, young people left home earliest in the three Nordic Member States – Sweden (21 years), Denmark (21.1 years) and Finland (21.9 years) – as well as in Luxembourg (21.4 years).

At the opposite end of the scale, young adults in Malta and Croatia remained the longest in the parental household. They left home at an average age of 32.2 and 31.9 respectively. Young adults in Slovakia (30.8 years), Italy (30.1 years), Greece (29.4 years), Spain (29.3 years), Portugal (29.2 years) and Bulgaria (28.9 years) also left the parental home at a later stage, according to Eurostat.

It should also be noted that in every EU Member State, young women tended to leave the parental household earlier than men. The highest differences between the genders were registered in Romania (25.6 years for women, compared with 30.3 for men), Bulgaria (26.5 vs. 31.1), Croatia (30.4 vs. 33.4) and Slovakia (29.4 vs. 32.2). In Malta, on average men left the parental home when reaching 33.2 years of age, while women left when reaching 31.2 years of age.